Need for Speed
For some online retailers, ‘e-mail customer service’ is an oxymoron
By Linda Punch
Terry Golesworthy recalls with dismay one online retailer’s explanation for poor e-mail customer service: all e-mails were still going to a member of the web site development team—which had set up the site but wasn’t responsible for customer interaction—who was deleting them.
What’s more, the retailer didn’t even know that customers’ e-mail inquiries weren’t getting through until Golesworthy mentioned the problem in a quarterly report published by his consultancy, The Customer Respect Group. “Nobody spotted it because there was no one managing or expecting e-mails to come in,” he says.
In another case, Golesworthy called a company which failed to respond to an e-mail inquiry. “They said they never check e-mail,” he says. “Well, why put it on your web site then?”
Haphazard approach
Such examples are commonplace, and reflect some retailers’ haphazard approach to e-mail customer service, says Golesworthy, who as president of The Customer Respect Group regularly monitors online retailers’ customer service performance. “Many people just don’t track metrics on e-mail,” he says. “They have no clue about how many they get and how many they respond to. As a result, there’s a significant number that just don’t go anywhere.”
Golesworthy estimates that retailers ignore between 25% and 35% of e-mails at any one time.
In addition to ignoring customer service e-mails, retailers are taking more time to answer the ones they do respond to. A fourth-quarter study of 100 online retailers by The E-Tailing Group found that the average response time to e-mail inquiries increased to 30 hours from 26 in 2003 and 2004.
In spite of the deterioration in overall numbers, evidence exists, though, that some retailers are putting more emphasis on their e-mail customer service operations. Those retailers are responding faster and with more complete answers. During the third quarter, 65% of e-mail replies were sent within 24 hours of receipt, significantly higher than the 40% in the previous study, according to The Customer Respect Group, which surveyed 35 major retail web sites.
And 74% of those replies were considered “very helpful” compared with 67% in the earlier study.
A frontline group
The E-Tailing Group showed a similar trend—questions were answered correctly 83% of the time during the fourth quarter, up from 79% a year earlier. The top 10 retailers in the survey all had response times below 23 hours.
Retailers that excel at e-mail customer service typically have a “frontline group of e-mail personnel—and their job is only e-mail,” Golesworthy says.
That’s the case at online consumer electronics retailer Crutchfield.com. Crutchfield has a 15-member staff devoted only to answering e-mails and live chat, supplemented by 10 call-center employees who are cross-trained to answer e-mail. “We want everything to be answered in under eight hours,” says Zach Zimet, senior marketing analyst. “If response time starts to exceed that, we bring in people who might not otherwise answer an e-mail.”
The E-Tailing Group study found that Crutchfield responded to e-mail inquiries in 6.08 hours during the fourth quarter. Crutchfield logged 2,000 customer service e-mails in December, says Kristi Richardson, customer service team leader.
72% of consumers expect an answer to their e-mail within 24 hours, according to a Customer Respect Group survey of 1,000 online users. But retailers should immediately send out an auto response e-mail acknowledging receipt of the inquiry and giving the consumer an estimated response time. “If you’re going to take two days, tell them,” he says. “Set expectations very clearly.”
Customer service training
While responding to a customer’s e-mail in a timely fashion is important, it shouldn’t be the only consideration, Golesworthy says. Most consumers would rather wait to get complete answers to their questions. “The customer does not necessarily expect an instant response,” he says. “People would prefer a very good response in two days versus a not-good-at-all response in four hours.”
Crutchfield emphasizes that the content of replies is as important as the speed of the response, Zimet says. “People aren’t being measured on how many customers they can churn through or how many e-mails they can write in a day,” he says. “They’re being measured on the satisfaction of the customer.”
To make sure that customers’ queries are answered in full, Crutchfield requires agents to work in customer service for six months before training to handle e-mails. “That’s to ensure that they really do know all the answers, have a lot of experience and can pretty much handle anything that comes up,” Richardson says.
Crutchfield then gives agents a four-hour course on using the e-mail program, including how to look up customers’ e-mail histories and how to use the response form. The retailer also checks the agents’ writing skills. “They have all the customer-service training they need,” Richardson says. “It’s just working that into a written media instead of on the phone.”
But even the best training may not prepare front-line customer service agents to answer every question. As a result, retailers need a coordinator or gatekeeper to make sure e-mail is forwarded to the correct department and to make sure the customer gets a timely and complete response.
That’s especially true if the customer asks multiple questions requiring answers from different departments. “At least half of the e-mail we track in this area ignores the second or subsequent questions,” Golesworthy says. “They take the first one and answer it but they ignore the second, third or fourth.”
By answering questions fully on the first go-around, retailers can head off follow-up questions that can eat up more time and resources, according to Golesworthy. Follow-up questions tend to be tricky because the subsequent e-mail will likely go to a different agent from the one who received the initial query. That means agents must be able to access the earlier communications so they can continue the conversation with the customer. “You need to have a sophisticated tracking system at your e-mail centers,” Golesworthy says.
Random sampling
Crutchfield has one administrator whose sole responsibility is to monitor the e-mail system to make sure all questions are promptly answered. “He keeps an eye on our reports to make sure our volume is correct and nothing strange is going on with the program,” Richardson says.
Lower-level managers also can pull reports on metrics such as how many e-mails were answered, how many remain in the queue, and lengths of response times. “We have procedures to make sure that no customer is overlooked by mistake,” she says.
Managers also check for the level of service by randomly sampling agents’ replies for quality, accuracy and whether it “just really answered the customer’s question,” Zimet says.
In addition, Crutchfield solicits feedback from customers, Richardson says. “We send them surveys and we review every single survey we get,” she says.
Crutchfield also trains agents to take the same approach to e-mail inquiries as they do to phone requests. “E-mail customer service isn’t any different than regular customer service,” Zimet says. “You want to provide the best service possible and let a customer do that through whatever channel they’re most comfortable with.”
At Bluefly.com, which outsources customer service to Call Tech Communications, one person on staff closely monitors customer-service e-mail inquiries, says Melissa Payner, Bluefly’s CEO. The call center forwards to Bluefly any e-mail inquiries that can’t be resolved in an hour. In some cases, especially ones involving dissatisfied customers, Payner will respond to the e-mail herself.
Quick response
Bluefly.com also has a “premier group” of five to 10 managers who deal with e-mail and phone requests requiring special attention, including requests for fashion advice or a personal shopper. “We manage it very closely so there isn’t really an opportunity for things to get lost in a bucket somewhere,” Payner says. Bluefly had a response time of one hour in the E-Tailing Group survey.
Golesworthy says more retailers are beginning to understand the value of operating e-mail customer-service programs. For one thing, it’s about 70% cheaper to handle an e-mail inquiry than a phone inquiry because e-mail is a batch process that isn’t subject to the peaks and valleys of call center volume, he says.
In addition, given a choice between a well-run e-mail program and the phone, most consumers will select e-mail, the less expensive option, Golesworthy says.
E-mail customer service programs also can serve as a repository of information retailers can use to improve site content and product information. For example, a retailer that receives a flood of questions about shipping can add that information to its frequently-asked-questions page, Golesworthy says.
A retailer doesn’t even need to set up a staff dedicated to answering e-mail inquiries to reap the benefits, he says. Regular call center staff can answer e-mails in the evening and overnight hours when call volume is low. “With e-mail, you have a 24-hour window,” he says.
If retailers don’t want to handle e-mail customer service inquiries, Golesworthy suggests they say so on their web site. “You don’t want to frustrate the customer,” he says.
He cites the example of Southwest Airlines, which states on its web site that it doesn’t accept e-mail and gives visitors a phone number to call. “We would score Southwest higher than someone that allows e-mails but doesn’t respond,” he says. “If you’re not going to set up an e-mail process, tell customers you don’t accept e-mail.”
And they also should post a customer-service phone number or provide links to an FAQ page.
The e-mail program also should be integrated into a retailer’s customer relationship management systems. “The people who have done the best job have done the integration,” Golesworthy says. “When people look at the customer-service metrics they are looking at the big picture as opposed to an e-mail division that does their numbers and a call center that does their numbers.”
A more important role
E-mail will play an increasingly important role in customer service, especially among retailers catering to consumers aged 18 to 24. “The younger the demographics, the more likely they will want to communicate using e-mail,” Golesworthy says.
In addition, consumers who shop online in their workplace also prefer e-mail. “Customers who use the Internet at work might not want to use the phone,” he says. “They’re afraid they’ll be on hold too long or that they will be overheard.”
That means online retailers need to allocate more resources to e-mail customer-service operations or risk losing customers to merchants that answer queries quickly and completely. “Unfortunately, some companies haven’t really understood that,” Golesworthy says.
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